


Advent Ficlets 2020

by tea_for_lupin



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper, Good Omens (TV), Midsomer Murders - All Media Types
Genre: At least where Good Omens and Midsomer Murders are concerned, Canon-Typical Nonsense, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Dreams, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, cocoa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27794620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_for_lupin/pseuds/tea_for_lupin
Summary: A collection of ficlets for thepromptscreated byMissDavisWrites. I've never done one of these before so we'll see how far I get.Prompt, fandom and characters or pairings will be given in chapter titles. It's going to be a bit of a mixed bag, so I hope you enjoy!Rating subject to change but very unlikely to go above Teen, on this occasion.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), John Barnaby & Ben Jones, Will Stanton/Gwion
Comments: 12
Kudos: 8
Collections: 2020 Advent Ficlet Challenge





	1. 'Tis the season | Midsomer Murders, Ben Jones & John Barnaby

‘So it seems,’ John said, swivelling his chair back and forth meditatively, ‘that someone is picking off the members of the Carolling Society of Little Parva.’

‘Well, maybe the murderer is a music lover, sir.’ That earned Ben one of John’s trademark faint-dry-smirk-and-half-nod acknowledgements, which Ben considered high praise by this stage. He grinned to himself and turned his attention to the email that had just come through from Forensics. 

‘…Actually,’ John said a minute later, ‘you might be on to something there, Jones.’ He tapped thoughtfully at a photo of the first victim. ‘David Ashton was a tenor, wasn’t he. _But_ —‘ he indicated the second victim ‘—Jacob Selwyn was a bass. Which means that the singers are currently balanced.’

‘I suppose so?’ Ben didn’t see where this was going, to be honest.

‘But if another tenor joined the group, things would be out of balance again.’ John gave Ben a meaningful look. _‘You’re_ a tenor, Jones.’

Ben now saw where this was going and did not like it one bit. ’Well, yes, but—‘

‘Think about it.’ John was in full, unstoppable swing; something Ben usually loved to watch, except when it was about to involve him as murder bait. Again. ‘Assuming our earlier idea is correct, and Jacob Selwyn was the real intended victim all along, then Ashton was…preemptive camouflage, if you like. A red herring, but a red herring that maintained the integrity of the Carolling Society. Well, let’s disrupt that integrity.’

Ben opened his mouth to argue and closed it again. John tossed him a copy of the Carollers’ songbook. ‘Cheer up, Jones,’ he said, heading for the door, ’think of the overtime.’ 

’Yeah, ’tis the season,’ Ben muttered bitterly, but he took the songbook with him as he followed John out.


	2. Bells | Dark is Rising Sequence, Will/Gwion

> Will found himself smiling and yet close to tears; and in the same moment he head, very faintly over the low roar filling the world now from the west, the high joyous sound of many bells ringing, somewhere out there, somewhere in the city. … Sea grew dark as sky … over the city the fireworks suddenly ceased, and the sound of the bells became a long jangling confusion, wild over the lilt of Gwion’s harp. Then they too abruptly stopped.’ — _Silver on the Tree._

Will woke himself with a shout, and still the bells clamoured. For a thick dreadful minute he was caught at the edge of a drowning land, unable to move, as the waves bore Gwion away; away and down.

_‘Beth s’yn bod, cariad?’_

With a gasp of relief Will saw his surroundings melt and resolve into the here, the now: the shabby shadowed walls of his London flat. It was the steady methodical pealing of church bells he could hear, ringing down the changes of a winter Sunday morning; the hushed roar of traffic, not oncoming waves.

‘Will?’

And Gwion was there, beside him, close and real. Will rolled over and buried his head in the warm curve between his shoulder and neck.

‘Just a dream,’ he said, muffled. ‘There were bells—and waves—I thought I’d lost you.’

Gwion nuzzled gently at the side of Will’s face, stroked his hair. ‘Just a dream,’ he said, voice mussed around the edges with the tail-end of sleep, ‘just a dream, _cariad_ , I’m here.’ 

‘I know,’ Will whispered, shivering off the last remnants of the memory as the bells rung themselves into silence. ‘I know.’


	3. Chilly | Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FYI: the lengthy performance alluded to in this chapter is Australian playwright Patrick White's famously dense [Night on Bald Mountain](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6281920-night-on-bald-mountain), not the musical piece of the same name by Russian composer Mussorgsky.

‘Is that _cocoa?’_ Crowley demanded suspiciously, darting his tongue out to taste the steam rising from the enamel mug. 

‘Yes.’ Aziraphale sounded a touch defensive. ‘I thought we might be a bit chilly, that’s all, and there’s just nothing like a cup of hot cocoa on a chilly night, is there?’[1]

‘I can’t believe you brought cocoa to an open-air production of ‘Night on Bald Mountain’,’ Crowley said.[2]

‘Well, what would you have suggested I bring?’

‘God,’ said Crowley, contemplating the fact that they were only two-thirds of the way through Act One of Three and they’d already been there on Aziraphale’s tartan picnic blanket for an hour and a half, ‘at _least_ three bottles of Château Lafitte. Each.’

Aziraphale made a sound that was, all things considered, not entirely unlike a ‘harrumph.’ ‘Well, if you don’t want it—’ he said, taking back the mug. 

Crowley grabbed for it. ‘No, I want it.’ 

Aziraphale held it out of his reach. ‘You don’t have to drink it.’ 

Crowley recaptured the cocoa. ’No, I’m drinking it.’ 

Someone turned around and shushed at them. Crowley bared his teeth at them in what could, theoretically, be called a smile.[3] Aziraphale made an apologetic face and pointedly turned his attention back to the makeshift stage; Crowley heard him give a soft contented sigh. Presumably more to do with the cocoa than the play. If he was honest,[4] Crowley supposed he could see the appeal of the drink, at least; its chocolatey smell was sweet and rich, and the warmth seeping into his hands was, yes all right, decidedly pleasant on what was—he had to admit it—a chilly night. 

[1] Aziraphale was, of course, one hundred percent correct, given that no one thing is, or indeed can be, precisely like another thing.  
[2] This was untrue; if anyone was going to bring cocoa to an open-air production of Night on Bald Mountain, Crowley would have, with great confidence, laid down wads of cash on it being Aziraphale.  
[3] The shushing person's next packet of chocolate digestives would turn out to be one-and-a-half biscuits short.  
[4] He did try not to make a habit of it, but it happened sometimes nonetheless. 


	4. Deck the Halls | Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley

Crowley draped himself insolently over an armchair[1] as he watched Aziraphale balance a touch precariously on the ladder. 

‘Does this look all right?’ Aziraphale asked, wrapping a last piece of silvery tinsel around the edge of a bookshelf. 

‘Yeah,’ said Crowley. ‘Decorations are good too.’

Aziraphale gave him a Look and descended the ladder. ‘Well, I think that should be just about everything done—not the tree yet, of course, but candles, tinsel… oh! The wreath!’ 

’It’s in this one.’ Crowley held out a box with ‘WREATH’ written on it in Aziraphale’s meticulous capitals. 

‘Thank you, my dear.’ Aziraphale took it and began removing the packing shred from around the large, evergreen wreath[2] with its gold and silver ribbons. 

‘You know I invented this stuff?’ Crowley said, idly fiddling with a spare strand of tinsel.

‘Really?’ Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. ‘But it’s so… so… well, so _sparkly_.’

‘That’s what sucks the humans in,’ Crowley explained. ‘They see it and go, _ooooh, shiny_ —‘ he waggled his long fingers for emphasis ‘—and hang it up everywhere, next thing you know it’s shedding like nobody’s business and you’re still picking bits of it out your teeth eight months later.’ 

Aziraphale looked puzzled. ‘Mine never sheds.’

‘That’s because you’re an angel, angel,’ Crowley said patiently. ‘You don’t expect it to, so of course it doesn’t.’

‘Oh.’ Aziraphale considered this. ‘I suppose that explains it.’ After a moment’s silence he added, with a worried air and the tiny little wrinkle in his forehead that Crowley always wanted to kiss away, ’Should I, perhaps, take it down…? Being a demonic invention and all.’ He glanced around at the gently twinkling bookshop. ‘It’s just, it really is so festive and I _do_ rather like it.’

‘Nah,’ said Crowley gruffly. ‘Not if you don’t want to. I don’t think decking the halls is going to get you in trouble with Upstairs. They’ve got bigger things to worry about, haven’t they?’ And he oozed out of the armchair and gently pressed his lips to that tiny little wrinkle to make it go away.

[1] Only out of habit,; he didn’t mean anything by it at this particular moment.

[2] It had been that way for at least the last hundred years.


	5. Shepherd | The Dark is Rising, John Rowlands & Merriman

> ...then he caught sight of Merriman and became very still. He stared at him for a long moment.  
>  ' _Daro,_ ' he said at last, huskily. 'What is this? You. You! I have never forgotten you, from when I was a boy. Do you remember? _Is_ it you?'  
>  Jane and Simon stood listening, puzzled.  
>  'You were Will's age then,' said Merriman, looking at him with half a smile. 'Up on your mountain. And you saw me... riding.'  
>  John Rowlands said, 'Riding on the wind.'

John’s father turned the lamp low, sending shadows dancing up the walls of the barn, making the bales of straw into spiky effigies of themselves. ‘Along home and to bed now with you, _bachgen_ ,’ he said, shrugging his coat closer about himself. ‘Pass me that blanket, will you, and I will see this sick sheep through the night, with luck.’

John passed over the blanket, scratchy with straw-speckles but thick and warm nonetheless. ‘Let me stay, Da,’ he argued, ‘I’m not sleepy.’

‘Home with you,’ his father said firmly, ‘there will be enough nights that you will spend awake with your flock. No need to hurry it. Off you go.’

With a grumbling sigh John left the barn. Outside the dark and the cold were so intense as to almost stun him; it was like walking into a wall. Gradually the stars came into view. Wisps of cloud were being driven across them by a high thin wind. John shivered in his coat, and plunged his hands into the pockets, and hunched his shoulders for the walk to the farmhouse, lower on the mountain.

A shifting in the sky that was more than cloud caught the tail of his eye, and he looked up to see an impossible sight. There was a man riding on the wind. John stopped dead in his tracks, and stared. 

It was a tall man, with a hawk’s profile and a shock of white hair, a midnight-blue cloak streaming from his shoulders, scarcely visible except where the stars disappeared behind it. Making no movement, he was nonetheless travelling at great speed, far above John’s head, clear as a dream. And he turned his head, somehow seeming to perceive John against the dark winter ground, frozen in place though he was. John had an impression of starlight on a sharp-planed face; felt, rather than saw, the deep-set eyes consider him. 

Then the man was gone, passed on so that his cloak could no longer be distinguished from the sky or the colour of his hair from the stars, and John was left blinking: a shepherd on a winter mountain, unsure if he had seen an angel.


End file.
